Album Review – Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers (2021) (Rock Indiana Records)
If you thought that all music recorded in the early half of 2020, was the maudlin obsessions of bedroom-pop teens who now finally had a reason not to leave their houses, or YouTube videos of the same people playing winsome versions of Wonderful by Oasis, then this eponymous album by Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers is going to dispel such rationale.
For this album is simply all manner of jangly power-pop wonderful, as Taylor (also of Dropkick and The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness jangly hook heaven!) is joined by his Dropkick bandmate Ian Grier, his brother, Alastair Taylor and Ian Sloan, to cherry pick ‘a best of compilation’ from the four lockdown sessions (find them all here) that Taylor recorded between April and October 2020 and re-invent them as a collective re-interpretation.
Thankfully, there is still everything Dropkick in the release, whilst at the same time encapsulting enough shifts in nuance to justify it not quite becoming their next album.
Initially, fans of the worlds finest Scottish power-poppers (I only do this because I enjoy the e-mails from indignant Teenage Fanclub fans…although I genuinely believe Dropkick are on a par with them!) will love the Dropkickian beauty of tracks typified by When I Don’t Understand, Not Running Out and the true stand out of the release, Time to Pass. Smooth, slightly fuzzy with the finest vocal delivery of the modern power-pop scene, you could listen to these tracks all day and still find new layers of beauty.
The nuance shifts are just as stunning. Probably the most disparate to the usual sound is heard in the overt alt.country / Americana of Life Is Good, I’ll Never Win and Still Playing Out, which transports to the other side of the pond and into stunning The Jayhawks territory, whereas the dynamism and all bluster is reduced to a minimum on the mid album, soft rock, triple salvo, of Everything’s Really The Same, Roundabout and It’s About Time.
Finally a pandemic project where the time was used wisely and not just as a cathartic release for uncertainty !!!…Grab yourself a Vinly LP or CD on pre-order here.
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